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[Ixis]

4/1/11
Lol, not an April Fool's thing. Been slowly plugging along for this game. Now all that's left is sound, music and graphics instead of the mountain of placeholder...

I may update and upload screenshots more often as things get done I think.

3/6/11
Minor updates, chugging along. About 50% done now.

I've been sitting on this one a while. Note: I haven't talked much or done any promoting about this until now because I feel if I post something and it never gets done I'll feel like an ass. If I stop posting anything altogether though it's probably not because I stopped working on this, but that I'm prone to just falling off the face of the Earth (I've been working on this game on and off since 2006 so I don't think I'd ever really abandon it.)

I don't want to post any screenshots because everything's placeholder right now (though I may, I don't know. Depends on how I'm feeling... I guess a few won't hurt, but they'll be at the end.)



ABOUT

Haasten is an RPG I've been working on in RMVX because I'm too stupid to understand programming. The idea was to make an interesting RPG (mechanically) using the basic design aesthetic of early JRPGs. In a lot of ways it's like the Dragon Quest series and in a lot of ways it isn't. I'll go into the design stuff after I've explained the backstory.



BACKSTORY/SETTING

So, long-long ago in 1983 the dream world and the real world merged, making this strange dreamlike dimension. Noone realized anything had happened until 1993 when certain people began to lucid dream. Lucid dreamers quickly became adventurers and heroes thanks to their ability to control the quasi-dreamworld. You run a guild of adventurer's from a secret bunker thanks to your telekinesis. This story is about the fall of your guild.

It's 1993 in the quasi-dreamworld ("realmspace"). The game features telephones, TVs, radio and other modern conveniences alongside doppelgangers, static-monsters, demons, genies, elves, etc.



DESIGN JUNK

The important stuff: so, you have access to all 12 playable characters right from the beginning, and up to 4 can be active at a time in a party. You can swap out members in your party at any point, even during combat (after a certain point in the story.)

Each character is very different and requires certain strategies to be effective, but they all fall into one of four major categories: DPS, SUPPORT, MAGIC and LEADER. DPS characters do heavy melee damage, SUPPORT characters can heal and buff, magic characters deal magic and burst damage, and LEADER characters have a mix of two or three other categories.

There are no random encounters, in fact there is only a finite number of monsters you can fight in the game. Also, grinding until you're strong enough to defeat the boss is impossible. Bosses and mini-bosses follow patterns and strategies and function more like turn-based platform encounters than the usual Final Fantasy fare. Most of combat with bosses revolves around figuring out how to defeat them, and how to survive long enough to gain the upper-hand. Normal battles are more about endurance and managing resources. Mana is extremely tight and hard to come by; a lot of characters have 10 or so MP with skills that cost 1-3 MP making resource management easier to gauge.

Monsters are also a lot tougher than in most RPGs since you have 12 characters that can be swapped out at any time. So long as someone's left alive at the end of the turn you can swap one character out for another (though, since this is the first game most encounters are pretty easy.)

With less focus on grinding and repetitive battles and more focus on management and strategy I hope to make an RPG that's more game-y and less dungeon crawl-y in my opinion (though, there is a part of me that does enjoy dungeon crawling personally now and again.)



PROGRESS

The only reason I'm posting this is because I made a major stride in development. With the exception of the phone line system (you can use payphones or normal phones to call random numbers you find on bathroom stalls, written on signs, etc) the game system is done. I was able to play through to the end of the game (it clocks at around 2-3 hours, 4-5 if you explore everything and do all the side-quests.) Now all that's required is to complete the writing and do the art (pretty much every scene right now reads "Character X goes here, does Y and feels Z!") Because of this I'm fairly hopeful I'll be finally able to finish this in 2011. But I've probably just jinxed myself.

Just finished all the story stuff the other day. It's april now, Ixis. April first. And aside from looking forward to the inevitable Homestuck update for its one year anniversary I'm pretty excited about finishing this game.



SCREENSHOTS

Wandering around

I forgot what this one is

I hope this one's combat

Looking at the river, I think

[Inanimate]

This is exactly the kind of RPG I love. Strategic bosses based around strategy instead of grinding... lots of available characters... cool aesthetic... 

[erakko]

Wow, from 2006? That's... a lot of time. Good luck with finishing it this year, but then again, do not rush it :)

Setting sure sounds interesting, hopefully the story will be good too. Say, is the character development up to player or have you done all the backstories, personalities and looks yourself? I can't really tell it from what you have here, but I hope it's the later one :)

Strategic bosses, I like the sound of that. I'm the kind of person who likes to rely on power in RPGs, but if the focus is mainly on strategy, I'd surely try this one out. This reminds me that I should probably do some sort of strategic elements to boss fights in my own game, that would solve the problem with player overpowering characters early in the game.

[Ixis]

All the characters have their own personalities and backstories. I personally prefer the open method, but since there's 12 of them it would be really hard to keep track and RP 12 separate avatars. You as the psychic guild leader though ARE customizable (as far as personality, name, likes and dislikes go, but it's very limited at the moment and strange in how it works.)

You're given a myers-briggs test in the beginning to determine which 4 characters are best suited to your personality and you get to see the stories of those four more in-depth (they also start off with a little more XP and certain bonuses depending on which ones are attributed to you.)

The strange part is that it's a myers-briggs personality test given by a somewhat insane philosopher. So don't expect the questions and answers to match up in sensible ways.

[Macros]

Hi,
I just registered here so I can talk to you.
I saw your work way back when you released the first alph. I found your style fascinating and I still have the beta stored on my PC.
Though I saw many projects where the developers presented a new game showed 5 screens, maybe a demo and you never hear from it again, I believed in what you said, that you will finish it and just want to keep still till it is finished.
I don't know why I beleved you, but every now and than I searched for your game and I am happy to hear that you didn't give up.

I wish you good luck with your project - keep going.


(Sorry if I made any mistakes I am from Germany and when I  found this thread I was just about to go to bed - well, good night volks)

[Ixis]

Cool to hear! ^_^

Man, I don't even think I still have the old beta o_O (I switched to RMVX years ago), but it's cool to know some people remember this RPG

[Dustin Smith]

i'd play the hell out of this rpg, i'm glad you're focusing on the combat system and not on needless grinding. if you want i could proofread your script -- lucid dreaming is a fetish of mine, and while i'm pretty haphazard on these fawrums i'm a stickler for grammar.

[Ixis]

i'd play the hell out of this rpg, i'm glad you're focusing on the combat system and not on needless grinding. if you want i could proofread your script -- lucid dreaming is a fetish of mine, and while i'm pretty haphazard on these fawrums i'm a stickler for grammar.

That'd be awesome since I'm doing the hardcore crunchy writing stuff now, though I probably won't have any new serious material for a while.

[Dustin Smith]

Just drop me a message whenever you want me to inspect/critique it. 

[green]

This sounds familiar.. Any chance I've seen this back in the days at rmxp.org or any other rpg maker website?

ps. haasten means rushing "to have haste" in dutch.

[Ixis]

yes

and

yes

[X3N]

Strategic boss fights makes me think of tactics games.
Looking forward to seeing more devlog.